Cancer rates up but deaths down

Updated
December 16, 2010 09:59:00

Fewer Australians are dying of cancer but the number diagnosed with the disease is climbing. People who live in well off areas are more prone to develop certain types of cancer according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

TONY EASTLEY: Fewer Australians are dying of cancer but the number diagnosed with the disease is climbing every year.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has found even with a growing and an ageing population the cancer rate has increased 27 per cent over the past quarter of a century.

And people who live in high socio-economic areas are more prone to developing certain types of cancer.

Anna Hipsley reports.

ANNA HIPSLEY: Cancer is the leading cause of death and disease in Australia. It accounts for 19 per cent of all health problems and one in every three deaths.

But if you're wealthy you're more likely to have certain types of cancer. People living in high socio-economic areas have slightly higher rates of lymphoid cancers, prostate cancer and breast cancer.

Christine Sturrock is the lead researcher with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

CHRISTINE STURROCK: It's difficult to explain exactly. As you know cancer, we don't have you know the magic, what causes cancer.

But we do know different things are risk factors for different factors. So when you tease the cancers apart and you pick particular cancers you can see that there are particular risk factors that can vary across different groups in the population.

ANNA HIPSLEY: Is there any lifestyle factors that point to the reasons?

CHRISTINE STURROCK: You would certainly expect that it would be to do with some of the lifestyle factors. And you know there's a lot research around. But unfortunately the data for this report doesn't actually give us the information to be able to make any definitive conclusions around that.

ANNA HIPSLEY: Interestingly the same demographic had lower rates of cervical cancer and lung cancer.

Simply being Australian also puts you at risk. We're more likely to have cancer than anyone else in the world.

Christine Sturrock says that can partly be attributed to the way we collect data on cancer rates.

CHRISTINE STURROCK: It's difficult to compare against other parts of the world. But one of the things that's really important in Australia is that we're very, very good at capturing cancer data.

We have legislation in each of the states and territories where all cancers need to be reported. So we're very good at counting our cancers and that's not true in all other countries.

ANNA HIPSLEY: We also top the list with the number of skin cancer cases. Australia's rate of melanoma is more than 13 times higher than the global average. We also have the highest rate of prostate cancer and the third highest rate of breast cancer.

But there is some good news to come out of the report.

CHRISTINE STURROCK: For me the standout finding is that the increasing rate is slowing and the decrease in cancer deaths is much more dramatic. And for me that's a really good outcome that we're able to see from this report.

ANNA HIPSLEY: The findings of the report which comes out every two years will be used by health professionals and policy makers to improve the way that cancer is treated in Australia.